


this dream going on with all of us in it

by andawaywego



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Brief mentions of Captain Swan, F/F, Season 6B, Violence, Wish-World, mentions of Outlaw Queen, slight language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-26 01:52:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9856667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andawaywego/pseuds/andawaywego
Summary: '“It’s not enough time,” Emma whispers and your eyes meet hers, full of desperation and something else you can’t define.“Oh, Emma,” you say and press yourself closer. “It never would have been.”'The events after that portal closed. Season 6B. SQ. Canon divergent. Regina's POV.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> okay, so this thing is a labor of love. it was originally intended to be one chapter, but it currently is sitting at around 40 pages on my computer, so i had to break it up a little bit. there was just so much room to grow the wish realm since we've barely even seen any of it yet.
> 
> it leads up to the events in the Wish Realm in the mid-season finale, and then spans after, of course.
> 
> there is a time jump after this first section first, but it's marked fairly obviously. 
> 
> i'm currently thinking this will end up being four chapters. i have the first three finished and will be posting periodically until it's finished.
> 
> read on, friends!

…

_this dream going on with all of us in it_

_.._

..

_i. we’ve read the back of the book, we know what’s going to happen next_

_.._

It’s the dumbest thing you could have done.

You don’t realize this until you are sitting in the waiting room in Northport with your son at your side.

The drive had taken exactly seventeen minutes with David behind the wheel—his steady hands tight on the pockmarked rubber—and Snow spent it in the passenger seat, turned around and watching as you tried and failed to heal her daughter.

Watching Emma breathing shallowly in your arms, your hands glowing bright with magic that sputtered out the moment the town line had been crossed. Watching Henry run trembling fingers through Emma’s hair as David pressed the gas pedal to the floor and flipped on the sirens.

Seventeen minutes was nearly too long, even with the lights on the squad car going. Long enough for Emma to say, “It’s okay,” like she was certain she wasn’t going to make it. Long enough for Snow to cry out, “Emma, sweetie, don’t talk, okay? We’ll be there soon. Soon.”

Her eyes had looked like that once before. When she’d groveled at your feet beside her husband’s lifeless body, begging you to tear her heart out and split it in half.

It was the dumbest thing any of you could have done and the doctors have said exactly nothing so far. Not a word in the initial panic of bringing her in, bleeding down your white blouse. David had been trying to hold her too, but couldn’t manage it while keeping his wife upright.

You’d felt small and scared in a way you hadn’t since your mother died in your arms, but you’d somehow had enough strength left to hold Emma like a bride and lug her from the car and into the emergency room.

She’d been taken away, whisked into the back on a gurney.

Now your mind is foggy, heavy with the dark clouds of memory that are making it hard for you to remember to breathe— _Emma’s soft eyes, Emma’s soft hands, Emma in town meetings and in your house and in your face and Emma when that sword—_

“Emma Swan’s family?” a doctor says. You don’t know how much later.

Henry’s hand is much larger than yours, which is odd because you only ever remember it being smaller.

Words you can’t make out over the buzzing in your ears make Snow look relieved, bring a sad smile to David’s lips, and you feel Henry sigh beside you.

 _Good things, then_.

Over the thump of your pulse, you hear the distant sound of Emma laughing. You’d miss that the most, if she doesn’t make it out of this.

The sound of it.

The smile it accompanies.

Emma’s soft hands on your hips, her lips against yours and her breath soft against your neck.

You’ve been trying to forget that, put it behind you, but in that waiting room waiting for the worst, it seems like the easiest thing in the world to remember.

..

_before_

..

When it happens, when you find her, you find that you can’t even remember how to blink or do anything of consequence. Because Emma Swan is singing in the forest.

There are probably a dozen or so reasons why you’re struck this way, but only three come immediately to mind.

The first is that this is not your Emma—though no Emma has ever been yours.

The second is that Emma looks far more carefree than you ever truly believed her to be capable of.

And the third is a chorus of songbirds, a sound like the leaves being brushed by the wind on an early summer morning. Clear blue skies and bright green grass.

 _You found her_.

It took a stolen wish and eight simultaneous dwarf-sized heart attacks, but you found her.

Somehow, you’d been able to bridge the impossible distance between the two of you and Emma is wearing a white dress and, lord, she’s collecting flowers, but she’s there and she’s _Emma_.

 _Your_ Emma.

Except that it’s not because _she doesn’t remember anything_.

When Charming and Snow arrive, old and worn and scared, and Emma doesn’t believe you, doesn’t trust you—says _Never_ with a particular venom that you haven’t heard in years—it’s all you can do to disappear, to get away.

.

“Be evil,” Rumplestiltskin says, but you don’t feel evil.

Not even in this dress.

Not even with this hair.

Not even parting guards and crossing the Great Hall towards the two people you’d once sworn revenge on.

Not even amongst frightened gasps and quivering dwarfs do you feel truly evil.

The problem, you think, is that you know how to love now. Before, when you’d vowed to destroy Snow and Charming’s happiness, you had very nearly loved nothing. Your father, but no one else.

And now you’re reenacting your old sins as someone who’s changed, with the added bonus of Henry, real or not, being there to witness. Emma watching, too.

You take Snow and Charming away and you have your fingers crossed behind your skirt when you say the final piece.

Emma will find you.

She always finds you.

You feel especially _Not-Evil_ crushing their hearts while Emma cries on the floor. You’ve come a long way. Your eyes sting as the dust slips through your fingers.

You tell yourself, _They’re fine, they’re fine. None of this is real anyway._

_._

“Ready, Emma?” you ask and Emma nods.

“Let’s go home,” she says and you did it—you made it, got Emma back.

Things have been easy for once.

You reach for Emma’s hand as the portal opens and you have to take a shuddering breath from how firmly, how softly, Emma grips your fingers through your gloves.

Your lungs expand just the tiniest bit, unfolding for the first real time since Aladdin sent Emma away with a wish and you pretend that you can feel Emma’s pulse as surely as you can feel your own.

But then Robin is there, crushing you with the longing guilt of unfinished business—that acidic rot building in your chest and the scorched memory of Emma’s hand in yours.

Robin is here.

Robin is _alive_ here.

You let go of Emma’s hand.

.

“Is it weird that I sort of miss the Evil Queen?”

You look across the fire at Emma, who is eating a handful of wild berries with red-stained lips and smile. You’re always smiling at Emma. No matter how dire the day.

“That’s not what I meant,” Emma says, looking away guiltily. “I mean, yeah, she cursed my parents and she sent us here, but at least if we were still fighting her, it would mean we’re home.”

You frown, that same smile slipping away to nothing. The home Emma is referring to is shared with someone else.

Not you.

“I can go change back into that dress,” you joke, changing the mood. You sit up straight and shake your hair out, lips forming a familiar scowl. “How’s that?”

Emma laughs again, snorting into her hand and nearly choking. Robin grumbles in his sleep a few feet away.

“No,” Emma says finally. “She never glared with that much affection.”

There’s a changed atmosphere in the aftermath of this.

Emma is aware of how you look at her.

Robin, grumbling in his sleep, is not.

Not here and he wasn't in the other world either.

.

Each morning, you look for Rumplestiltskin. You try to talk Emma through seeing where he may be with her magic and each day, you are unsuccessful.

Robin had been hard to convince, had ranted and raved about not wanting to trust an Evil Queen, but he’d eventually let you explain things. After a long while, he believed you. Perhaps it was some remnant tether of connection between the two of you, carried out even in this poorly-forged world. Perhaps you’ll always find yourself near him, no matter the world.

He’s taking you to his Merry Men, to get you supplies, a horse if he can manage. You won’t keep him long.

He’s different here and you’re trying not to focus on the freckles on Emma’s wrists with her sleeves pulled up like that, when she’s tying her boots or gathering firewood. Things are confusing enough without the shadow of someone you were meant to share eternity with following you around too.

Emma is certain that you’re being followed. Henry will be coming after you, she says. He’ll want your head.

But for now—

“Concentrate, Emma,” you whisper. With her eyes closed, you allow yourself to stand much closer than you might if she were looking.

“Regina,” she says, “This isn’t working. All I see is what’s surrounding us, which, you know, kinda cool when it’s not two squirrels doing it—” She gestures above your head, but you don’t look. “—but I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

A while ago, you might have gotten angry. Might have tried to anger her to get her where she needed to be. But, for now, you reach out and lightly wrap your fingers around her hips, drawing her so close that her shoulders brush against your front.

You feel Emma take a surprised breath and she tilts her head a bit, when you say, “Reach out, beyond the woods and look. Sense him. Find him. You’re looking for something dark—like smoke in a small room. Something bigger than you. Magic like his is hard to hide.”

It works.

She sees him—lurking in the shadows, in a tunnel of glass, walking up and down and then the image is gone.

“You did well,” you breathe, releasing her and taking several steps back. “Very well.”

.

Robin’s eyes are careful and calculating when you ask him, walking through the forest beside him. “Is it possible the princess’s magic is not entirely reliable?” he asks. “Could she have misinterpreted what she saw?”

He’s looking at you in a way that makes you wonder if he can feel it too, this inherent connection. You wonder if you’re imagining it—if your mind is simply assimilating a thought with a projection of him beside you.

_He’s not real._

Emma is hanging back somewhere behind you. You can hear her heavy footsteps on the leaves, through the dirt, snapping branches.

“No,” you tell him. “That’s not a possibility.”

You turn to look at Emma and she meets your eyes, smiling in some twisted and unfamiliar shape. As if she’s disappointed in herself or you or Robin or _someone._

.

The Merry Men are loud here, too.

A look of relief crosses Robin’s face when you arrive and you brace yourself for that familiar little boy running up to him, yelling, “Papa!”

It’s a familiar sight and one you’ve seen many times over. Robin is only half of himself when he is away from his children.

You think of Henry again and hardly realize that you’re pressing into Emma’s side.

No boy comes.

He ushers you to a tent that’s empty on the far edge of the camp and says, “Find me if you need me,” with his eyes firmly on you, then adds, “Keep your head down. I’ll have your supplies by morning,” and drifts away.

Left alone, Emma finds a stack of ratty blankets and lies down on the floor of the tent. She shivers a little and you shrug off your coat, drape it over her and tuck it in.

“Thanks,” she mumbles quietly, smiling at you as her eyes drift closed and she pulls your coat more tightly around herself.

There’s a tug in your chest at the sight.

This actual _being_ with Emma has snuck up on you.

.

You can’t sleep, so you stumble out of the tent some hours later.

Emma shifts a little when you go to move, but she doesn’t wake.

Outside, the Merry Men are still talking, still drinking, and you sit and shiver on the forest floor by the tent and draw your knees into your chest to capture some of the warmth that is trying to escape.

You think of Emma. Think of Henry—at home and in hot pursuit.

Before you can think of Robin, he’s there beside you with a mug of something he hands to you before sitting down.

“Thank you,” you say and it’s ale of some kind—you’d forgotten how bitter it was in this world, how watered down in the other—and he nods gruffly.

It’s companionably silent for a long while. Just the two of you sitting there, the warmth of him sure and steady beside you, and you long to reach out and touch him—to apologize for those things he doesn’t know about here—but you know enough not to.

“Why are you helping me?” you whisper eventually and Robin turns his gaze to you.

You feel his eyes moving over your face, but you don’t turn to him. You just take another large sip from the mug and wince as it slides down your throat.

“I don’t know,” he admits, but then, “It…I didn’t want to.”

Now, you do look at him. He’s the same as you remember, but older. Tired. The wrinkles on his face are something you don’t want to think about because you were supposed to be with him long enough to have matching ones and here you are, talking to his shadow after you saw him die. Felt him leave you.

“Why did you then?” you ask, surely now.

He tilts his head up and meets your eyes. “I’m not certain I can describe it,” he tells you. “Something about you feels incredibly easy.”

He takes a large drink from his own mug and some of his men in the distance are laughing uproariously, unaware of you sitting there with him.

You think of Emma again—always Emma again—sleeping in the tent.

She is anything but easy. You’ve fought her tooth-and-nail for years and now she’s letting you tuck her in at night, touch her waist and whisper in her ear.

You don’t have anything to say, so you nod.

A couple of minutes later, when your mug has been emptied, he takes it from you and says, “Goodnight,” before disappearing into the maze of his men’s tents and leaving you to sit there alone.

.

The next morning finds a _Wanted_ poster on a tree nearby, next to the creek.

You see it first, but Emma is close behind, stomping her way over the forest floor as if she’s trying to punish it for its sins. It’s early—the sun barely peeking up above the trees—and the creek is hardly a ten-minute walk away. Whoever put it up was close enough to have discovered you last night.

You stand by the tree it’s nailed into, frozen as you trace your own likeness transcribed into ink smudges and you can feel your face flushed as your heart thumps painfully in your chest.

It says _Dead or Alive_ at the bottom.

“You okay?” Emma asks and then she sees the poster. “Oh, shit.”

“As always, I am impressed with your vocabulary, Miss Swan.”

Henry calls it “emotionally distancing” yourself, when you call Emma that. You’re inclined to agree.

Emma stiffens, but doesn’t say anything. Just continues to breathe on your neck and then—blessedly—slips her hand into yours and squeezes. Twice.

“Come on,” she whispers. “We gotta get moving.”

You’re pulled to the creek to fill several borrowed water pouches and Emma watches you the whole time, splashing water on her face that makes her hair stick to her forehead.

It’s hardly your fault that you can’t resist brushing it out of her eyes when she stands.

It’s early, the light barely coming through, but you’re certain of the flush on Emma’s cheeks when she steps around you.

.

Robin tries to warn you, but Emma says, “We already know,” and starts gathering the supplies he’s brought.

“I can come with you,” Robin tries. “I can help.”

Desperate eyes meet yours, but the moment falls flat. He’s realized that you have nothing to offer him and then you’re looking at Emma again, who is shoving the baggy sleeves of a borrowed shirt up her elbows.

“It’s too dangerous,” you tell him. “Don’t risk your life for me when you have a son to worry about.”

A shadow crosses Robin’s face and his shoulders droop. He doesn’t have to correct you. You already know.

“My boy,” he starts, turning his face away. “Is he…Is he alive in your realm?”

You think of the small boy you’d never gotten to say goodbye to and say, “Yes, Roland is alive.”

Robin nods. He doesn’t look at you again.

You know now why he’s different in this world—what has made him colder.

“I want to help you,” he says, after moments of silence. “What can I do?”

You leave camp burdened with extra food and a pouch of gold that Robin slips into your coat pocket. He gives you clothes so you don’t stick out as much and there’s only one horse to spare.

And then there he is after months without him, with moving on and memories of a funeral and you stand in front of him and say, “Thank you,” so quietly you’re not sure you mean for him to hear it.

Robin’s as warm as you remember when he brings you to his chest, pulls you into his arms, and he trusts you—trusted you even though you look like the woman who killed his wife in this world, looked like her in the other world too. And he’d loved you anyway.

He’s never fought you on anything other than being with you—always been unwittingly easy and warm and the only thing you can think about when he says, “Be safe,” is that Emma is somewhere behind you.

Emma is back there shifting her feet awkwardly and being much more difficult than Robin ever bothered to be. She’s hard-won back there and you’ve come so far from that first meeting—angry, surprised, and already a little in love with her in your study that night Henry brought her to Storybrooke.

You shouldn’t be comparing them when one of them isn’t real and the other isn’t yours.

Robin—as always—lets you go.

On the horse, Emma’s hands are heavy on your waist.

.

You get into a fight with Emma over the best way to hide you from sight a little ways up the road. You’ve stopped to eat and she is leaning against a tree saying, “You don’t think I can do it.”

It’s more than that. You say, “A spell to keep me hidden would take too much to sustain, Emma—“ Her name catches in your throat, but you cough and continue. “Do you realize how dangerous that is?”

Emma looks like she wants to fight you on that, wants to straight up yell or push you into the tree she’s leaning on or something. You watch her in the afternoon light, watch the way it filters green on her forehead through the lives, shines shadows on her face and makes her eyes look bright with a fire you haven’t seen in them for a long time—since the darkness took her away from you and brought her back in pieces.

She doesn’t ask again.

.

“This is taking too long,” Emma says the next morning.

There have been seven _Wanted_ posters in a row in only an hour of riding.

You find yourself drawn on each of them and you can hear the frustration in Emma’s voice as she walks beside you.

“Henry is going to find us sooner or later. He’s different here. He’s not—”

 _Ours_ is the most obvious way to end that sentence, but Emma doesn’t say that.

You don’t speak, just grip the reigns a little bit harder, afraid that anything you might say will give away the fear you’re feeling—that you’ll be caught, that you’ll be executed before you even make it home.

That the last thing you’ll see will be someone who looks like your son, swinging the sword down on your neck.

“If we’d just gone through that portal,” she doesn’t finish that one either. She just says, “Robin,” under her breath and you draw the hood of your cloak up around your face to hide away.

There’s a light in her eyes and even if it’s anger, it’s beautiful—the most life you’ve seen in her in so long. You’d forgotten what it looked like.

You wonder why she’s choosing now to bring Robin up, to lay the blame, when she must have been thinking about this for days now. _Why?_

You’re certain now that Emma must feel something for you—something that you’re not saying, like something invisible between the two of you that you keep bumping into and then running away from.

Why?

Why now?

It could have been better at home—could have saved so much heartache—if she could just love you back.

.

Emma finds the glass tunnel that evening. It takes about an hour of you leading the horse while she is walking through the forest with her eyes closed, hands out to keep her from bumping into anything.

She doesn’t fall once, relying entirely on sensing what’s around her.

It’s something you’ve never been able to accomplish without peeking once or twice.

“It’s here,” Emma says and you’ve reached the mouth of a cave. “I saw it. It’s in here.”

You tie the horse to a tree and follow her inside. It’s dark and you feel her hand reach out, fumbling to grab yours. After hours of one-sided ranting and a lot of silence, she squeezes your fingers in greeting.

In the tunnel, you pull from some of her energy and cast a ball of light up so that you can see.

“He’s not here anymore,” Emma says, but that’s obvious. “Of course not. That would be easy.”

“Yes, but why was he here at all?” It’s the first time you’ve spoken in hours and you can hear the gravel in your voice from disuse.

All you can see is the glittering, thick glass above your head. Rumplestiltskin had his reasons, of course. The Dark One always does.

You’re not sure what you were expecting to find.

“It’s a dead end, Emma,” you say, but Emma lets go of your hand and continues forward, her white shirt disappearing into the black up ahead.

“It can’t be!” You jump without meaning to at the sudden jump in volume. “It can’t be a dead end, Regina, because we have to find him! He has to send us home! Henry is there! My parents are there and we’re—“

“—stuck here,” you finish for her. You can see her up in the distance, frantically looking around in the glowing light. There’s nothing to find and she looks back at you in desperation, like she’s drowning and she’s waiting for someone to pull her out of the waves, and she’s hoping it’ll be you.

“I’m sorry, Emma,” you say this quietly, too, but a little louder. She stops looking and just stands there, waits for you to say something else. “I’m quite aware of our position and I apologize, Miss Swan, that it is my fault. But—”

At once, you want to tell her about seeing him there on that beach and how it had felt like some kind of redemption for losing him in the first place, but you hesitate. The complicated emotions get tangled in your throat, the lump that’s making it hard to speak a tangled up knot of the words you want to say, but can’t.

You don’t say that it felt like Fate reminding you of Robin, bringing him to the surface after months and months of moving on, getting lost in the turn of Emma’s smile, the delicate curve of her throat. You don’t say any of that.

What you say, as Emma takes a step towards you, wringing her hands together in front of her, twisting her fingers and looking guilty, is just one word.

Her name.

“Emma,” you sigh, and her eyes spark to life in the light from above you, and her face is very close, perhaps the closest the two of you have ever been, and then she jerks forward and kisses you.

You don’t even have to think or do anything, really, before you’re kissing her back. The only conscious part of it is when you wrap your arms around her and tug her closer so that she gasps into your mouth.

The light above you twists in a kaleidoscope against the glass, sparkling white onto your skin and making you feel dizzy and dazed and _certain_ for the first time in a long time. Her hands and fingers find your neck, your hair, and she’s _kissing_ you finally and it’s nothing like you’d imagined.

Her lips are warm and a little dry and you try to imagine this happening anywhere else—the station at home, the street outside Granny’s, your bedroom, her car, _everywhere_. But the thoughts and images get twisted with her tongue in your mouth and you hear her boots scraping against the glass below you to get closer.

It’s possibly the best thing you’ve ever heard as it mixes with a sharp breath Emma draws against your lips.

But then there is the distinct sound of glass beginning to crack around you.

It starts at the farthest end of the tunnel—just a whisper of sound—and travels all the way to where you’re standing at the opposite end. The noise pulls you apart and you watch as cracks begin to spiderweb through the glass around you.

.

It’s because you’re so unprepared that you can’t do anything to stop it.

You’ll tell yourself that for hours and hours on repeat afterwards.

So caught up in the moment that Emma acted first—pushed you out of the tunnel just in time because she’s the _Savior_ and you’d made her remember it here. Your body slams into the dirt floor so hard, so suddenly, that you don’t realize you’re yelling for her until she doesn’t answer.

You breathe heavily when it gets quiet, when that horrible sound of the glass clinking around in the darkness, finally stops. The light you’d put up is flickering and you barely even see her lying there, but then you do.

She’s lying there, where you’d been standing— _kissing her_ —and now she’s bleeding and there’s blood soaking her shirt. So much of it. Everywhere—

You could nearly pretend she were asleep if it weren’t for the lacerations staining your hands as you pull her to you, reaching out with your magic to heal her and whispering, “Emma, Emma,” and getting no response.

Your hands are shaking so terribly that you can barely wipe her face clean with the heat of your fingers, the purple glow of your palms.

Nothing works.

Like trying to stumble your way through a dark room and hitting a wall with no doorknob.

The wounds don’t heal and you are struck, for the first time since Emma said, “ _Never,_ ” in that horrible voice in front of her fake-parents, with the knowledge that you are completely and utterly alone.

And Emma is dying.

.

It takes all your energy to get you to the closest town, hiding your face in the folds of your borrowed cloak, and you say, “I need a mage,” over and over to people passing by you in the streets, but no one pays any mind to you.

It might have been a relief to have not been recognized if Emma weren’t still bleeding on the horse.

“I need someone who can heal my friend!” you cry out desperately, and you manage to catch the eye of an elderly man by a cart of potatoes.

“There’s no mage in this town, I’m afraid,” he tells you when he approaches, but that can’t be.

“A town of this size?” you ask, hand fiercely gripping what uninjured part of Emma’s ankle you’re able to find. “Surely there’s someone who can heal her.”

“And surely you remember that magic was outlawed by Queen Snow and King David ages back,” he says this with a twinkle in his eyes that makes you suddenly afraid that he knows exactly who you are. But then he says, “But, it would be a miracle if there were someone still around who practiced healing magic. Perhaps my wife would know someone like that.”

It takes a moment for the meaning to be fully understood.

You follow him through the streets and the woman who greets you in the small wooden house by the docks stops smiling when she sees you and the dying woman you’re bringing to her on a horse.

.

Your greatest concern should be having to take your hood down inside, but instead it’s—

“Whatever caused her wounds was enchanted. I’m afraid I can’t do much to fix it unless I know with what exactly.”

The woman’s name is Kyra, and she clicks her tongue against her teeth as she holds a damp cloth to Emma’s face, wiping it clean, but the cuts keep bleeding.

Her husband, Fineas, cuts up potatoes in the corner of the room.

Your knees are digging into the rough floor, but you don’t move. You just hold Emma’s hand and try not to cry, try to _think_ because it’s just you now and if Emma dies—

You have to get her home. _Henry_ is at home. Waiting for the both of you.

“How did this happen, dear?” Kyra asks.

You are silent for a moment, calculating. You say, “Glass. A glass tunnel. It collapsed.”

“And your magic couldn’t heal the princess, your majesty?”

The question drops your heart into your stomach and you look up from under your head to the older woman’s warm, blue eyes. You pull the hood down, finally, and say, “No…I couldn’t heal her.”

Fineas stops chopping with that knife and Kyra opens her mouth to say something else, but Emma wakes up at the exact moment sound starts to come out.

She is weak and she is dying and you say, “I’m here,” like it will fix those things, holding your face close to hers and trying to quiet her pained weeping.

And it doesn’t matter that there are two strangers in the room watching the entire thing, or that there’s a bounty on your head. You run your fingers through Emma’s hair and you say with almost enough conviction to have you believe it, “You’re going to be okay. I promise.”

.

“Word’s been spreading like wildfire that you’re back,” Fineas says over warm potato soup.

You sit by Emma’s side with a bowl of your own growing cold between your hands. You know that you need to eat, need to build enough stamina to heal Emma properly, but you aren’t hungry. Your stomach is in knots and the thought of eating makes you sick.

Emma has stopped bleeding. Some kind of poultice has been spread on her cuts and her shredded, bloody tunic lies in the corner of the room where you can see it while she shivers under a thin, itchy blanket.

“More than words,” Kyra says, not unkindly. “You killed the King and Queen.”

She doesn’t seem afraid or angry. She is watching you with careful eyes and she isn’t eating either.

You wonder if, in this world, your wrath never quite touched their lives.

“It’s a shame,” she throws in, turning her eyes away. “’Course it was a shame they banished you in the first place. Shame what happened after, too.” You look up at this, astounded and certain that you heard her incorrectly. “I’d never seen someone as powerful as you. You were a force to be reckoned with, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

Past tense, you notice. You’ve lost your power. Before…Maybe you could have fixed her before, but now you’re powerless.

Emma groans a little.

“How did you come to be with the princess, your majesty?” Fineas asks.

You don’t answer that, but you do take your first bite of the soup he’d given you.

Then, finally, “There’s a price on my head. A lot of gold. Enough that you could live comfortably for the rest of your lives, and then some.” You look up at them, sitting there and watching you with a softness you’d like nothing more than to frighten away. “Why are you being so kind to me when I killed your King and Queen? Why haven’t you turned me in and collected your reward?”

Kyra laughs—a bright sound that sounds much younger than she looks. “Oh, I thought about it,” she confesses. “My husband, too—” Fineas looks away. “—but you should see the way you look at her, dear. Perhaps it would make you believe that there’s more good in you than there could be bad. And it’s been a long time without anyone to help.”

Emma’s hand is too hot. She has a fever. You press a kiss to her knuckles.

You hold her hand and try not to cry, remember her lips on yours and that same warm hand on your waist only hours before.

.

You wake up later. You’re not sure how much later.

It’s dark outside and Emma is feverish beside you and it takes you about ten solid seconds to realize that the sound you’re hearing outside—the one that woke you up—is footsteps raging up and down the streets outside.

Surrounding you.

One voice, then several others, saying, “Open up by order of the prince!” and pounding on doors.

Henry, it seems, has found you.

Fineas comes struggling into the room, limping in the darkness towards the window. “Royal Guards,” he says and you knew that.

Kyra is unsurprised, too, and says, “You need to hide with the princess, your majesty.”

There is nothing you can think of that could have led you to deserve such kindness in the eyes of someone who took you in, took Emma in, is trying to save your life right now.

You say, “There’s nowhere to go. If they find me, they’ll hang you for this.”

You’ll be hanged, too, but you don’t mention that part. Let it sit unspoken on the air between you.

And Emma’s best chance of being saved will be gone with you.

“You once had more power than all of the sorcerers, witches, and mages in the kingdom combined, your majesty!” Kyra fires back. “You’ll hide her until they’ve gone and searched us!”

It’s not up for debate anymore and you struggle to tell her that you’re not powerful enough anymore. You’ve lost over half of yourself in that split and all that’s left is this hollowed out version of the woman you were before.

Even Rumplestiltskin had seen through you.

But there is a heavy fist at the door and a man saying, “Open your door!” and Fineas is looking between you and his wife, waiting for someone to say something.

“I can’t keep us hidden for long,” you say and then you close your eyes, tug the blanket covering Emma up and over your head as you send your magic into it, hiding yourself from view.

From in between the wide stitching, you can see the proud look on Kyra’s face. To anyone else, the bed appears empty of all occupants. Just a blanket flat on the straw mattress.

She goes to the door.

Emma’s face is close to yours and you look at it, covered in that mossy green poultice to keep the cuts from bleeding, and you brush your lips against the only clean, uninjured section of her forehead.

When the door opens, a burly man in full armor enters, pushing past Kyra and Fineas and saying something you can’t hear past Emma’s hot breath in your ear, though it’s loud and the cadence of it vibrates your fingers, still glowing purple against the edges of the blanket.

He stomps around the small house, opening cupboards as if expecting to see you curled up inside them. For a moment, he hovers just over the mattress where you’re hidden with Emma and your heart thumps loudly in your chest, vision beginning to wane as you struggle to push enough magic out to sustain the spell.

Fineas and Kyra stand by the open door, watching.

Finally, he draws back.

You exhale as quietly as you can and bite your lip from the effort to keep going. He is still standing in front of you.

And then someone else enters.

You struggle to see him through the grey fabric, but when you do there’s a chill inside you that no amount of warmth from Emma’s fever can heal.

“No sign of her here either, your majesty,” the man says and Henry steps towards him, eyes stormy as he looks from Kyra and Fineas to his soldier.

“That’s impossible,” Henry says. “He told me we would find her in Ryn. And yet she is nowhere to be found in any of the houses.”

“My men are still searching, my prince. We may find her yet.”

You clench your eyes shut, still straining. Your head thumps out a steady beat of _he told me, he told me, he told me._

“They had _better_ find her! Or you’ll answer to me!”

This is not your Henry. This Henry was given a sword when he was too young to hold it upright. This Henry was raised with the burden of a crown on his head. This Henry had not hesitated when he tried to kill you.

He does not know you. He does not love you. He thinks you abducted his mother, murdered his grandparents. He would see your head on a spike.

The muscles in your arms tremble from the effort.

Finally, he whips around and exits without another word and his soldier follows, not even bothering to close the door behind himself.

Kyra does it for him—shuts it with shaking hands and you finally lower your hand from the blanket, pull it back and collapse fully beside Emma, eyes drifting closed.

Fineas comes to you and says something, but you don’t hear him.

Your head spins and you are weak, worn, weary—already fading.

_He told me, he told me, he told me._

In your dreams, you are alone.

It’s dark and you hear Emma breathing somewhere, saying _Regina_ and you try to follow her through the darkness, try to find the light somewhere but there is none.

You are alone.

..


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you dudes for your feedback! you're the bomb and i'm glad people are enjoying it thus far.
> 
> keep on giving me your thoughts if you want!
> 
> we get super plot-y in this one, so some of it is pretty dense conversation and explanation wise. just as fair warning. it's also like angst personified, too.
> 
> i'm also really making stuff up about magic that's not necessarily dealt with (to my memory) in actual canon, so apologies if you have to make compromises for it while reading.
> 
> otherwise, read on, friends.

..

ii. _i’m alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling_

..

“You’re in no shape to go anywhere, your majesty,” Kyra says some hours later.

The sun has not risen yet and you’ve been awake—shaking still from the earlier exhaustion—no longer than ten minutes.

“Don’t call me that,” you whisper, but she’s hardly listening as she applies another layer of the poultice to Emma’s wounds. “Please.”

Emma has not woken—will not wake if you don’t help her.

If you don’t get her home.

“Prince Henry is looking for you,” Fineas says, as though you hadn’t seen that for yourself just hours before. “He’ll have guards everywhere.”

“Then I’ll cloak my appearance until I’m outside of the city.”

The conversation about that very spell that you’d had with Emma comes immediately to mind and you run your thumb over the clean part of her left palm.

“What am I to do if there’s a second raid? I’m not able to hide her the way you did,” Kyra tries, but you shake your head.

“If they return, they’re not exactly likely to kill the princess, are they? You claim you found her like this and they’ll take her back to the castle for safekeeping, no doubt.”

Fineas looks like he wants to argue with you some more, standing by the door, but you have to go.

“We need a piece of that glass to heal her,” you whisper, so quietly that it almost goes unheard. “To see what it was enchanted with. She can’t die.”

But then Kyra says, “You’ll need to leave soon. Before the sun comes up. Keep your head down and hurry. Don’t want you wearing yourself out before you even get out of the city.”

.

Outside, the city is quiet.

The horse Robin gave you is tied up by the house and you stop to pat his neck kindly before continuing. You wish you could take him with you—it would certainly make the short journey shorter—but it would also draw unwanted attention to you and that is the last thing you need.

Your hands are trembling from the effort of the spell, something that makes you suddenly more afraid than ever that you may be caught before you even get far.

You’ve made yourself look like Robin—an irony that makes you a little sick—and it fits into his clothes much better than you do when you’re yourself.

Slowly, you make your way away from the house, away from Emma, and towards the edge of the city gates. You walk quickly, afraid to be too slow and that the trembling of your hands will give you away should you bump into anyone.

At the gates, there are two guards that weren’t there when you last came through them, heavy in their polished armor. They look at you carefully, as if sizing you up, and your hands are still trembling until the moment they let you pass without even questioning why you are leaving so early.

Clearly, Snow and David became lax in the years after they banished you in this world. Their soldiers are incompetent and their prince lacking the foresight to put the city on lockdown.

But it’s lucky for you.

.

You keep the guise up as far as you can, which is really only for another half mile outside the city and then you drop it—feel yourself shrink back down to your actual size in Robin’s old clothes.

Hands still trembling you draw the hood of the cloak over your head and continue on.

.

It’s still dark when you reach the cave, head alight with images of Daniel in your arms, Henry on that hospital bed—

The Henry from this world, murder in his eyes like you’ve never seen before.

The tunnel is exactly as you left it. You don’t linger, just carefully grab several pieces in a folded piece of cloth and stow them in the baggy pockets of Robin’s trousers before leaving.

Emma is waiting, dying, on that bed in Ryn and she’s counting on you to hurry back and save her.

There’s one problem:

Prince Henry is waiting for you outside with his sword already drawn.

.

“You can’t fool me as easily as you can fool my men,” Henry—Prince Henry—says, eyes vicious, mouth turned down in a handsome snarl.

You’ve never known your little boy to be capable of such an expression.

He’s not your little boy. The glass is digging into your thigh or maybe you’re imagining that part.

He is alone. There are no Royal Guards with him and you can practically see him trailing after you through the woods to the cave, hiding out until you emerged.

You don’t realize it until later, but somewhere in the back of your mind are the words _I wish, I wish_ and images of Emma smiling at you, kissing you, awake and whole and uninjured.

“The Dark One said I would find you here,” and _Henry, oh, Henry._

“The Dark One?” you manage to ask, your lips curled down in confusion.

Rumpelstiltskin.

You freed him.

He’s free and he’s telling Henry where you are and he’s not helping you save Emma or get you home or _anything_ but he has time for a nice chat with the Prince?

He has his sword drawn and pointed at you, ready to strike you down, and you’re still weak from earlier, but you think you might be able to manage getting back to Emma before that happens.

“What have you done with her?”

He’s asking for Emma now, growing impossibly angrier and the sword is trembling a bit in his hands. You think of Emma on that mattress, dying and bleeding.

You need to choose your words carefully.

“The Dark One said you have her! I demand you to take me to her!”

In this world, it seems, his grandfather had too much of a hand in raising him—he is foolhardy and eager. He has forgotten, in his fury, that you have magic, that you are supposedly the same sorceress that once threatened his bloodline.

You are weak now, of course, and you would never hurt him even if you understand, logically, that _this_ Henry is not _your_ Henry.

But it isn’t as if he knows that.

And he’s still pointing that sword at you.

“What did you promise the Dark One?” you hear yourself asking, taking a foolish step towards his sword, trying to reach the part of him that is not ready to kill you, if such a part truly exists inside.

“What have you done with my mother?” he asks it again, ignoring your words.

“The Dark One doesn’t freely give away information, Henry,” you say. “What did you give him in return?”

You are thinking about how dangerous this whole thing is. Henry could have signed away your life or Emma’s or _his_. He could have given Rumplestiltskin the kingdom itself, a worrying thought if you’re truly to be trapped her any longer than past the end of the day.

Past the end of the minute.

First Rumpelstiltskin put you in his pocket, got himself free, and now he’s gotten something from Henry—the future ruler of the kingdom with Snow and Charming dead and Emma bleeding out.

Henry is shaking his head. He doesn’t know what you want.

He says, “Where did you take her, witch? If you hurt her, I swear—”

“I wouldn’t hurt her!” you cry out suddenly and even Henry jumps from the volume of it, the shock of the emotion in your words. “She…She is injured, Henry, but I’ve done nothing to her! I’m trying to save her! Why do you think I’m here in the first place?”

You dig around in your pocket and pull out the wrapped-up glass, opening it to show him what’s inside. You’re not positive, but you believe he may drop the sword a little to look a little more clearly. There is some semblance of your son in him, even if he’s a mere shadow. Some goodness that doesn’t want to kill, that just wants to save his mother.

“She was injured by shards of this enchanted glass,” you tell him. “I need pieces of it to figure out how I can save her, but I can’t do that if you kill me.”

Something inside of him looks like he is still ready to gut you then and there, but another emotion has moved into his eyes—doubt.

He is doubting his intentions, his bloodlust. He is starting to believe you.

But before he can decide one way or another, there are heavy hands grasping you roughly by the shoulders and your hands are being bound together behind you by his guards.

You struggle. You think you hear yourself yelling at Henry—that it’s a mistake, to let you go, and you keep thinking _Emma, Emma, Emma_. Maybe you’re yelling that too.

It doesn’t matter.

Everything goes black.

.

“What should we do with her, your majesty?”

When you awake, you’re on the ground, face nestled against a particularly sharp branch that digs into your cheek. Your hands are still bound behind you and the sun is coming up.

You can’t have been out for very long. You’re tucked away from whoever it is, facing a tree and you can hear someone pacing—heavy footsteps crunching through the forest floor.

The back of your head throbs painfully when you first go to move, raw and aching from whatever you were struck with.

There is someone sitting nearby. You can hear his breath, but it is soft and slow—as if he’s asleep or particularly bored. If you curve your neck enough, you think you can see him—sitting there with his back to you. He’s either not paying attention or asleep, but he’s a good fifteen feet away either way and he doesn’t notice that you’re awake.

“ _I don’t know!_ ”

And that’s Henry. You’d know his voice in any world. He sounds desperate here—panicked. You remember, at once, the doubt in his eyes before you were knocked unconscious.

He sounds far enough away that you press against the rope binding your hands together, feeling the warm tingle of magic spreading out from your fingertips as you start to work on the ropes. You do it slowly, carefully—worried that, if you attempt to remove them too quickly, you may be left too weak to take advantage of your escape when they’re gone.

Your head is a mess of _Emma, Henry, Emma, Emma_ and images of her broken, bleeding body—Daniel’s body, Henry’s in the hospital—are flashing through your head in a horrible jumble.

You don’t recall making a wish. Not intentionally.

But you must have earlier—maybe still are—because your eyes are drawn upwards as you work on the ropes and all you see for a moment is the roof of the forest, bright green in the early sun, but then— _there!—_ a bright blue dot appears. You wonder if it’s a star for perhaps three seconds, but it is getting closer and you know, at once, who it is.

The Blue Fairy descends on you quickly, coming close to where you are lying, helpless, and saying, “Regina,” in a resigned voice.

As you had with Henry—with Charming and Snow and _Emma_ —you remember, at once, that she knows you only as she had in this world. She knows nothing of how you’ve changed, your redemption. Perhaps the last time she saw you she was obeying Snow’s order to stop the arrows heading straight for you, blindfolded and expecting death.

Had that been the moment they’d decided to banish you in this realm?

You’re not certain, but you don’t have time to wonder for too long because the Blue Fairy is disappearing in a flashing swirl of light that leaves her your size and hidden behind a cloak much like yours saying, “I heard your wish,” in a very quiet voice, as if already disappointed in you. “But I’m afraid I am in no place to grant the wish of this realm’s greatest tormentor and the woman who murdered the King and Queen not four nights ago.”

She looks over your shoulder at your guard and ducks behind the closest tree. The man grunts lowly—perhaps in his sleep—but doesn’t seem to hear her.

You wonder if the explanation you used on Rumpelstiltskin might work on her, too, but you’re afraid that it wouldn’t really matter in the end. You hadn’t known you’d been wishing anyway. There’s no love lost in her words.

“As if you could help me anyway,” you hiss, a hint of venom and malice in your voice as the ropes continue to thin around your wrist. Your face stings from the branch beside you. “Shoo, fly.”

The Blue Fairy sighs and peeks around the tree. “Why do you wish for the Princess’s health? She is the daughter of Snow White. Why are you trying to save her? What do you have planned for her that her death would negate?”

“Nothing!”

You say this too loudly and the guard behind you grunts again, but does not seem to wake, so you lower your voice to repeat the word more quietly.

Henry’s footsteps are still crunching their way in circles and there is a soft murmur of another of his men speaking softly to him or someone else.

She scoffs and looks away from you, so you do too. “I find that hard to believe.”

“I need her to live,” you say quietly. “I need her to live so that I can take us home. This isn’t real, none of it is.”

“Of all the things I have heard the Evil Queen say,” the Blue Fairy begins and you wince at her use of your old name, “that is the most unbelievable.”

“I don’t need you to believe me, gnat!”

Too loud again. Another grunt.

You need to get out of here before you’re discovered.

She is very quiet for a long time. She just watches as you finally free yourself of your bindings and sit up, brushing off the sleeves of your tunic and rubbing the raw, abused skin of your wrists.

“I have to get back to her,” you say. You feel the uncomfortable digging of the glass still in your pocket and smile a little. Henry’s guards had not thought to confiscate the shards. “She doesn’t have much time.”

The guard behind you is miraculously quiet, so you turn to look at him—expecting to find him asleep still—but are met with the sight of him watching you with wide, half-awake eyes.

He has finally awoken and is watching your hands fearfully. He is young—not much older than Henry and hardly a man at all, save for the rough patch of stubble peeking out around his lips and on his chin, and you’ve killed boys his age before—long ago, of course—and treated it as though it was a normal occurrence.

It _was_.

It isn’t anymore. The thought that you may have to kill him—silence him—rushes through your head and heart in twisting knots of panic that move so quickly that he hasn’t shouted yet by the time the thought has truly sunk in.

You move those hands he’s so afraid of, raise them to make him quiet or sleep or something other than shout for help and get you _killed_.

Except—

The Blue Fairy does it for you.

With a flick of her wrist, he falls to the ground.

“You’re telling the truth,” is what she says when the boy has fallen—slumped to the ground.

You nearly don’t register that it’s been said until you see the gentle rise and fall of his chest.

He’s alive.

“Of course I am,” you breathe. “You helped me.”

She’s watching you with careful curiosity in her eyes that she’s never before directed your way. It’s a similar look to Henry’s, when he’d still had that sword pointed at you some hours ago.

“Yes,” she says, “I did.”

.

She follows after you, through the forest—practically jogging to keep up. You are tired—exhausted—from the mere act of freeing yourself so you’re shaking your hands and trying to bring that familiar heat of magic to them so that you can transport yourself back to Emma.

But it will take time.

After a moment of silence—of the simple sound of leaves crunching underfoot and Henry’s voice falling further and further away, your heart pounding in your ears—she says, “You only want the safety of the Princess?”

It’s less a question, and more a statement. Still, you nod, but you don’t look at her—keep your eyes trained to the path ahead.

She must see the truth that the gesture holds because she is quiet for a moment.

She says, “I’m afraid her wounds are beyond me. There are things beyond even my power. The magic that caused this must be very strong. But, if what you say is true, I may be able to assist you in returning to where you came from.”

All of it takes a bit to come out—she’s still calculating, watching you as if trying to find any sign that you may have been lying.

When she finds none, she continues, “The tunnel where the princess sustained her injuries was built by a former Dark One some time ago. Once, it spanned the length of several kingdoms as a hidden, underground road to each of them through which he could orchestrate the assassination of several monarchs throughout the land and seize their power and control for himself.”

You listen to her whispers and want to tell her that none of this matters anyway—this world is gone where you come from and you have no intention of returning to it once you have your son in your arms again.

“If Rumpelstiltskin truly shattered it, he must have had darker intentions. He would have known that you and the Princess were there, which means he intended to put one or both of you in harm’s way for his own gain.”

You’re keeping your ears on the sounds beyond her voice, listening for any sign that the fallen guard has been discovered or has woken up and yelled for help. There is none.

Yet.

“Henry said he made a deal with the Dark One to find his mother,” you say, more for the act of realization than to really clue the Blue Fairy in on this particular bit of information. “Henry must have given him something in return.”

She says nothing. This is obvious, but perhaps not as worrisome to her as it is to you.

“I need to get Emma out of here,” you say, continuing your quiet steps forward, through the forest, and the Blue Fairy follows you closely, hiding her face behind her cloak and stepping so lightly that she does not make a single sound against the forest floor.

“I may be able to arrange passage home, but I cannot help you heal the Princess.”

Of course. She’s said this already. You wonder if she’s good for much.

“Rumpelstiltskin promised me passage home as well and that didn’t quite play out in my favor,” you tell her.

“I am not the Dark One,” she says simply, but it isn’t as if she’s ever been on your side before.

“Why should I trust that you would want to help me? The Evil Queen?” you practically spit out the last bit, the words feeling like poison on your tongue.

Silence for a moment, and then she speaks again.

“Many years ago, after you were banished, the King and Queen outlawed all magic in this land. While they were thinking only of the safety of their kingdom, the new law included me and my sisters, as well as other allies that had put their lives on the line to help them,” she says this, her voice quiet and burdened with a sadness that has not alleviated with time.

“Despite aiding in their victory, we were punished the same as you and treated as outcasts. I do not think the King and Queen meant any harm, but that does not mean we were unscathed. I’ve spent my years in hiding, watching and learning, unable to help in the ways I used to.”

She is close behind you, breathing softly, and you continue your way through the forest, feeling the familiar tug of loss in your chest at her words. “I’ve left many wishes unaided and treated them as though they were unheard—the cries of the hungry, the thoughts of the poor…Many of the King and Queen’s loyal subjects have died from preventable illnesses or suffered consequences that the fairies may have been able to help.”

Your feet stop moving before you have the chance to decide that it’s not a good idea—that you’re not far enough away. You step behind a fallen oak tree and look at her more clearly, more surely.

“Why now?” you ask and the corners of her lips tilt up just the tiniest bit.

“Because yours is the first wish I have heard in a long time that was not selfish. You wished for safety of the princess—her return to health,” she explains and you turn your face away to hide, unable to meet her eyes as you remember Emma, waiting for you. “While it took me a while to justify confronting you, the desperation your wish carried was very hard to ignore.”

She’s watching you as if she knows. You imagine she does.

“I will help you,” she says. “You need only ask.”

So you look at her. Really look.

You’re not certain that you ever have before this moment and what you see surprises you. She looks tired, beaten. Worn in a similar way that Snow and Charming had when you’d brought them to your ruined castle.

“Will you help me?” you ask, quietly.

She nods. “Of course I will.”

.

It’s a little while later that you feel strong enough to transport yourself, in a haze of purple magic, back to Emma. You stumble when you appear, leaning against the table by the fireplace to steady yourself.

Kyra is leaned over Emma, wiping her still-bleeding wounds and Fineas jumps as you appear.

“Be more careful, dear,” he says, hand on his chest. “My heart isn’t what it used to be.”

You give Kyra the shards of glass and kneel beside Emma, closing your eyes and breathing deeply to compose yourself. The exhaustion is seeping into your very bones and you worry that it may become too hard to fight before you’re able to get Emma away from here.

Henry will have noticed your disappearance now. He’ll be coming.

“I don’t have much time,” you tell them and Kyra looks up from the table where she’s inspecting the glass. “The Prince captured me, but I got away. We need to leave.”

You’re not certain if they’ll come with you, but you prepare yourself to fight them on it. Henry will be coming for _them_ too. The Dark One must have spared no details on who was housing them and it’s too dangerous to leave them behind.

“She’s in no condition to be moved, your majesty,” Kyra tells you.

“We don’t have a choice!” you snap without meaning too and immediately regret it. But then, “I’m sorry.”

This you mutter to Emma, though you’re apologizing to all three of them. Emma is still unconscious, but still breathing. She looks almost peaceful, if you can ignore the deep gashes on her face and neck and arms.

But, of course, you can’t ignore them.

You think of the Blue Fairy, whether or not you can trust her, and you realize that it’s better not to worry about what it will mean if you can’t.

You’re running out of options.

.

It’s some time later that Kyra sighs and you’re half asleep at Emma’s side when she finally looks up from the glass.

She doesn’t say anything for the longest time and every bad scenario you can think of runs through your head at an amazing speed, blending together into a terrible whirl that makes your stomach churn uncomfortably.

Then, “What is it? What do I need to do?”

Your only previous experience with enchanted injuries were ones you yourself inflicted or had inflicted by order. Rumplestiltskin talked briefly to you about them some time ago, but this is not a curse.

This is not something that True Love’s Kiss could fix and, anyway, if it could…Henry isn’t here.

There’d be no one to break it anyway.

“I’m afraid there isn’t much _to_ do, dear,” she tells you and you think of the Blue Fairy saying something so similar.

_The magic that caused this must be very strong._

“What does that mean?” you say and your voice sounds much more bitter than originally intended. The question comes out as a quasi-snarl that frightens even you the slightest bit. “There has to be _something_.”

Fineas is somewhere else in the back of the house and you’d heard him messing with things before—clinking glasses together and shuffling around—but the noises have stopped now, as though he’s listening.

Emma is hot against your side, hair soft against your fingertips.

Kyra sighs and meets your eyes. She holds up the glass, smeared with something that she’d concocted some time ago in the fireplace—something that had smell vaguely of lavender and burned your eyes as it popped and groaned in the pot.

She looks defeated.

You have a sudden and fierce realization that perhaps she is.

Perhaps you are too.

.

What it comes down to is this;

The glass in the tunnel was enchanted with magic she cannot narrow down.

Cannot pinpoint.

“It’s dark,” she says, “I’ve never seen magic so dark.”

This means that there is no cure for it.

At least, not one she knows of.

And you are running out of time.

Henry will come bearing down on you soon and Emma is still dying.

You must leave.

And you have nowhere to go.

.

You try moments after Kyra says this—cupping the shards in your hands and closing your eyes.

The magic they carry is not hard to find when Kyra tells you what to look for.

It’s all around you, when you reach out to it—suffocating and heavy and so dark you can’t see anything beyond the absence of light.

You shatter them further against the stone fireplace and Kyra jumps, but does not reprimand you.

There’s nothing else to say.

.

That afternoon finds you wasting more energy to disguise the pair of you to get you out of the city.

It’s the most foolish thing you could have done and your nervous energy leads you and the horse to the gate.

Kyra and Fineas are not with you.

It had been a waste of your time to try and convince them that it was unsafe to stay—that the Prince would find them and punish them for aiding you.

 _We’re old, dear,_ Fineas had said too kindly when you’d tried, _We would only slow you and the princess down._

They’d helped you fashion a travois to carry Emma behind the horse so that she would not be as roughly handled during the travel, but each step away from them—each step closer to leaving them to fend for themselves—feels so very heavy.

_When you’re out of the city, follow the sound of the river. After a half-day’s journey, you should come upon a cabin with a fence around the side._

_Stop there._

_I have a friend there who may be able to help you further. She’s very familiar with enchantments and may be able to help you where I cannot._

You play Kyra’s words again and again, repeat her instructions so that you will not forget.

There are no guards at the gate.

You count yourself lucky.

You do not linger.

The river is to your right. You know this already. You follow it.

.

Emma wakes before you get to the cabin. At first, you think she is still unconscious—merely crying from the pain without being fully awake to experience it.

And then you realize that her eyes are open.

“Emma,” you whisper and you halt the horse’s movements and go to her, lean over, press your fingertips to her chin and stroke the untorn skin you’re able to find.

“Hurts,” she whimpers and closes her eyes more firmly against the tears.

There’s nothing you can do to fix it, but you try to help anyway. Your palm is purple and warm against her chest and you lie to her—“It’s okay,” you whisper. “You’re okay.”—until you’ve numbed her enough that she falls back asleep.

.

It’s nearly dark when you reach the cabin. So dark you can barely really make out it’s slightly twisted shape, curved to the side from either wind or age. You hesitate, of course.

Emma is still blessedly asleep and you need to hide.

The journey had been nerve wracking enough as was, though your luck is still going strong. There were no sounds of pursuit behind you, no voices coming through the woods—angry and commanding men on horseback to find you.

You’ve passed only three _Wanted_ posters emblazoned with your face and a trickle of dread chills you deep in your chest. If the prince has not caught up to you, yet, it can’t be for lack of trying. You think of Rumple, somewhere out there, razing villages—as Emma had said—or perhaps something far worse.

It’s possible that your luck at not being found, at having escaped in the first place, is only to make up for the fact that Emma is going to die.

Fate balancing the scales.

You can’t stay here much longer.

You don’t want to think about Emma dying.

You don’t want to think about your trembling hands.

You knock on the door.

.

It’s Ruby.

Kyra’s friend is Ruby and she looks ready to fall into a dead faint when she opens her door to see you standing on the other side. Her hair is gray and there are lines around her mouth, creases on the pale skin of her forehead. And the thing is, for 28 years, you looked at this woman and not once did you ever realize that, one day, she’d look like this.

Nothing has prepared you for it.

“ _Regina_?” she asks and her voice carries a minute tremble that makes your hands shake more fiercely.

You don’t have time for a full explanation.

You give her the fast version, already tying the horse to her fence and combing deft fingers through Emma’s hair again as she begins to wake—the effects of your spell wearing off.

“I need your help,” you say last, because it’s the best place to finish—the easiest way to gain sympathy.

You are desperate and you’ve been desperate before, but you’ve always hidden it carefully.

This time, you don’t.

You say, “ _Please_.”

Ruby who stood at Snow’s side for years. Ruby who sat around a table and voted on your demise before your almost-execution. Ruby who you cursed and Ruby who served you coffee each and every morning for twenty-eight solid years.

Ruby who found her happy ending anyway in your world. Who was left alone in this one.

She says, “Of course,” and helps you carry Emma inside.

.

They must have banished her, too, you think when you’re watching her inspect Emma in what must be her bedroom. Her cloak is hanging on the bedframe, draped there. It’s aged, now. Older and not without its tears and splits.

You try to imagine what that must have been like, for Snow to turn away her best friend with a simple decree. Outlawing magic would outlaw those who rely on it—would send Ruby hiding away in the woods with her grandmother for years and years.

Living in solitude.

Keeping her head down.

Making her more forgiving of Regina’s wrath, her hatred for Snow and Charming, because she’d been forced to see past their true and good nature.

She’d been forced out.

“She’s very strong,” Ruby says, sounding respectful and awed.

You remember, suddenly, that this Ruby does not know Emma. The last time she’d seen her—if at all—Emma had been an infant.

“Exceedingly,” you agree and Ruby looks up at you.

Perhaps she sees in your eyes what Kyra had, what Fineas had.

She seems eager to help.

You’re reminded of how much you’d grown to like this woman when she doesn’t ask you why you care for her—when she simply accepts that you do.

.

“There are legends of a flower that could heal any wound, enchanted or otherwise.”

This is said sometime later when you’re sitting by the fire with her. She flits around the room, much more subdued than she had been when she was younger. Her hands tremble now, like yours, and it’s almost funny how little she ended up looking like her grandmother in the end.

You try not to think about Granny—kindly, forgiving Granny—and how she must have died out here, with no one to love her but her granddaughter.

“I’ve never heard any such legends,” you tell her, a fierce reminder that you’d once lived in this world too.

Ruby laughs and hands you a mug of something warm, something minty.

She’d filled three of them. The third, likely, for Emma.

“You wouldn’t have,” she says. “It was a long time ago.”

You feel your eyebrows raise and she smiles at you, too easily forgiving.

You think of the Blue Fairy and how eager she’d been, how excited to have someone to save, to aid. Finally.

“My granny used to tell me stories,” she explains. It is not the age gap, apparently, that makes the difference in knowing these legends, but the accessibility.

“A flower?”

The tea she’s made warms you to your toes and you’re so grateful.

So lucky so far, even with Emma dying in the bedroom.

You wait for an answer.

She shakes her head and sits down across from you, her wooden chair creaking unhappily from the weight of her. “I can’t remember,” she says.

_Can’t or won’t?_

But then, “She said that a fisherman traveled to Lake Nostos to gather enough water to heal his wife, but spilled some of it on the ground on his way back. Where the water fell, it grew this flower—able to heal any illness or injury. Mortal or otherwise.”

“Lake Nostos is long gone,” you say and Ruby nods, but offers nothing more. “How does the flower heal exactly?”

“I don’t know,” Ruby admits quietly, looking uncomfortable, “I was never sure. Granny didn’t seem sure either.”

Something quite like panic begins to rise in your throat.

“The magic used was…It was very dark. Is there no other way you know of?” you ask, and it’s sad, you think, to need help from others.

You were once so powerful that you ripped every soul in the realm to another world. You were once so powerful that men would swear fealty to you the moment they spotted you on the battlefield and stories of your reign of terror were enough to quiet any unruly child.

But the power to destroy is much different than the power to heal. You were not trained in the art of fixing things. The Dark One trained you himself to decimate.

The power to heal comes from the power to love and you’ve learned to recently how to do that—only truly known for three years now.

That’s not enough time.

And now, here you are. Powerless. Helpless.

“None, Regina,” Ruby says, so informal with your name. You’re not certain that you ever even really spoke to her here—can’t recall it if you truly did.

Perhaps you had, but she says it as Snow once did in this world.

It must be a learned behavior.

You consider your options.

Trace your lips with your cold finger and remember Emma’s warmth against them.

After a moment, you say, “Did your grandmother ever say where this flower grew?”

.

You leave Emma there with Ruby, who says _I’ll protect her, Regina. I promise_ , but perhaps she hadn’t known how dangerous housing her could truly be.

If Rumpelstiltskin tells Henry of Emma’s whereabouts a second time, Ruby’s life could be in danger, but she seems so eager after a life of hiding. So eager to be a hero again.

You can’t bear to tell her no.

It’s dark in the forest with no towns, no guiding lamps posted on the main roads to guide you. You stumble and trip and you think of Emma.

Think of Henry.

Your Henry. Sitting at home and worrying about his mothers.

Emma laughing with her arm around him, her green eyes fixed on you across a room and the jittery feeling you get in your stomach whenever she’s close enough to touch.

You are tired.

It’s been two days since you truly rested.

Still, you move forward.

It isn’t long before you hear it—footsteps and men behind you.

That sound of pursuit you’ve kept your ears pricked for have finally arrived.

They are close. They are loud.

They will find you and they will capture you and Emma will be left alone in that shack with Ruby to die.

Your hands are shaking so terribly that you can’t even really remember to keep walking, can’t think a thing except _Emma, Emma, Emma_ and you cannot fail but you may not have a choice.

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trekking on through. i plan to have this whole thing posted by Saturday at the latest. just two more chapters.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is now officially canon divergent. woo. 
> 
> i wrote this before whatever last night's episode was, but damn are there a couple of parallels.
> 
> there will likely only be one more chapter (though I might end up doing a nice little epilogue because holy crap is this thing angsty)
> 
> WARNING: there is violence in this, and three known deaths (one implied) two of whom are fairly major characters in the show.
> 
> although, they're not actually real in this world, but yeah. fair warning.
> 
> read on friends.

..

_iii. i made this place for you, a place for you to love me_

_.._

_She was never sure_.

Your hands are achingly steady when you reach out with them, close your eyes, draw from the air surrounding you.

_Somewhere dry._

As always, your thoughts on Emma—her in the forest, hands out like yours, following the Dark One’s shadows.

_Where the sun can shine._

In the furthest edge of yourself, you think you can feel something bright and whole.

_That much magic would be hard to hide._

Something filling up the darkness around you and making everything seem a little more clear.

_You’ll know it when you see it._

You reach out your hands—steady, steady—and then—

_There!_

“I had a feeling I would find you here,” a voice says behind you and suddenly what you’ve been running from has reached you.

.

The flower sits at the edge of a tree, up on a teetering precipice of jagged looking rocks. You think you could scale it and get to it, if it weren’t for Henry and his men swarming behind you, surrounding you.

.

His sword remains sheathed at his waist. You can see that even in the darkness and his men are standing behind him, eyeing you warily. It’s possible that your escape is what it took for them to see you as a real threat—as someone who could beat them.

And the thing is, he doesn’t look like he wants to hurt you.

He doesn’t have any hatred or malice in his voice when he says, “Where is my mother?”

He simply sounds worried beyond belief.

The men behind him look terrified of you. You’d forgotten what that was like.

You say, “She’s safe for now, but not for long. She needs help.”

He shifts his weight, looking unbelievably exhausted. “The glass you claim hurt her—what was it enchanted with?”

You’re taken aback at this question, mostly because you had gotten the impression during your last conversation with him, that he believed you to be the reason Emma is dying. Now he doesn’t sound so sure.

“I’m not certain of the details,” you tell him. “I don’t know, I—” Your mind immediately flashes back to those moments after the shatter, when you hadn’t known if Emma was hurt or with you or anywhere, only of the sound it made when you hit the dirt floor.

The feeling of her shoving you back.

You don’t end up finishing because Henry looks terribly uncomfortable, as though overcome with something akin to grief. You watch as he draws his arms in towards his chest, as if attempting to protect himself from some invisible blow.

“The Dark One,” he says quietly, looking for all his might as though he is trying to remain strong under the watchful gaze of his men. “He said there would be a price for finding her.”

So he’d bargained Emma’s whereabouts out of Rumpelstiltskin, but that still doesn’t explain what he’d given in return.

“There always is with magic,” you tell him. “No matter the intention behind it.”

There is silence for a very long moment.

It stretches out impossibly between you and this shadow of your son and then Henry looks up and says, “Why are you out here? Where is she?”

And he isn’t pointing that sword.

Neither are his men. He’s looking at you in a way you’ve seen from your own son.

He’s looking at you like he trusts you.

So you tell him.

.

He sends one of his men to gather the flower from the rocks, though you offer to go instead.

“If you should fall and break your neck, how am I to find my mother?”

And you almost tell him right there, but trust doesn’t mean he doesn’t still think you killed his grandparents. It just means he’s desperate for help.

If it’s your life in the balance, you’d rather stay where you are and watch someone else scale the rock face.

“The Dark One,” Henry says in the darkness, his voice sounding weary, “What price did you pay for his help?”

You look at him, find his silhouette and eye it in confusion.

He must sense it—he meets your eyes—and his hand is still on the hilt of his sword because he walked in to find you with the dust of his grandparents’ hearts on your fingertips. But he says, “You knew. You speak as though you too have made a deal with him in the past. What price did you pay?”

You are silent for what feels like a very long time.

Long enough for the knight sent up to retrieve the flower to return and hand over its small, golden body to his prince. Long enough for Henry to turn it carefully between his fingers, as if expecting to see instructions printed on its shining petals that will tell him exactly how to save his mother and vanquish evil for good.

You included.

Visions of him at the town line, driving away with Emma, come, unbidden to mind. Your mother dying in your arms. Your father’s heart in your hands and Henry not remembering you—calling you Mayor Mills. Robin cold at your feet and Emma—Emma bleeding and dying—and _Daniel_ , pained and angry and not himself at all and covered in blood.

Henry is watching you still, waiting for an answer.

Emma is still bleeding out. You need to hurry.

You say, “I don’t know,” and it feels like hours have passed since his question when it can’t have been more than a minute or two. “I think I’m still paying it,” you add and Henry doesn’t seem to know what to say to that.

.

Henry looks wrong in Ruby’s house—too big for it in his armor and the furniture and somehow amazingly small too, kneeling next to his mother.

“Mom,” he says—too informally for this world, perhaps, but it sounds right even as you nearly respond in kind out of reflex. You wonder, not for the first time, how much Emma’s mind truly had power in crafting this world.

How much she’d considered before she was put here.

Henry’s men are outside the house and Ruby is watching them through the windows with her worn cloak drawn around her shoulders. She’s been on edge since you arrived with the prince in tow, looking to you for help and explanation when she’d opened the door.

It was a first, for sure. You can’t recall anyone but Emma and Henry— _Snow,_ though, with David dead on the ground—as if you were a life raft and the boat were sinking.

“Did your grandmother ever mention in her tales how to wield the flower’s power?”

What you don’t say is that you’re worried this has all been too easy.

Henry could have killed you—his men could have killed you before he told them not to—or you could have just not been able to find the golden flower at all. It was far more likely that the flower not exist at all, let alone close to where Ruby’s house is settled. And yet, here you are.

The flower hidden in a small pouch on Henry’s belt, because he’d refused to hand it over to you until he saw his mother—alive and… _unwell_.

And Ruby closes her curtains carefully, turning her head to look at you.

“I’m afraid not,” she says quietly. “I’m not even certain that you’ve truly found the flower. This all seems—”

Apparently, she’s understood without your needing to make it clear.

“Too easy,” you finish for her. “I know.”

“Prince Henry,” Ruby says quietly a moment later, eyeing the boy in the other room as he cradles Emma’s hand in his, “why is he helping you?”

You turn to look at him, this boy who is not yours, and you say—can’t help it, don’t need to lie—“I don’t know.”

.

You give them about twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes of Henry’s quiet murmurings that Emma is going to be okay—not unlike your own to her the past couple of days.

Twenty minutes of standing by the door with Ruby, watching the men sit around in circles, throwing glares up at the house as they do. One of them—Captain of the Guard, no doubt, based on how close he is standing to the door and watching through the windows.

Twenty minutes, and then you say, “I’ll need the flower if I’m to heal her,” with enough kindness that you don’t think Henry looks angry or interrupted. He simple reaches down towards the pouch that holds the flower and opens it to give it to you, releasing Emma’s hands to do so.

Except, something is wrong.

You can tell the moment he realizes it because a look crosses his face.

And then he says, “Where is it?”

Panic seeps into your chest and spreads icily to your fingertips. “What?” you ask, and Ruby is watching all of this happen with impossibly wide eyes, looking for all the world as though she wishes she hadn’t let you in at all.

Henry is on his feet in an instant, his sword out finally and pointing it at you and screaming, “What did you do with it, witch?”

Ruby’s door flies open and Ruby jumps, pressing herself into the wall as several of Henry’s men come barreling in with their weapons drawn as well.

But you—your eyes are locked on Henry’s, at that little bag at his waist and how it’s empty and you are out of choices and options and _everything_ with that flower gone.

Emma is going to die and you are going to have to go home alone.

And then you feel him.

The darkness he brings. You feel it the moment it enters the room.

Henry and the men must feel it, too. As does Ruby. She draws her hood around her face just as a voice rings out—

“Looking for this, dearie?”

Rumpelstiltskin is standing in the bedroom beside Emma now and Henry jumps and turns to look at him, finally tilting the sword towards someone other than you.

In his hand in the flower, his long, scaled fingers twisting it back and forth by the stem and you take a step forward without realizing it, saying, “Don’t touch that!”

Although, it’s ineffectual at best.

Rumpelstiltskin simply laughs—actually throws his head back with the movement—and says, “Now, now. When have you known me to ever give into such pandering requests?”

“You’ve gotten all that was promised in our bargain, Dark One,” Henry says in a commanding voice that is not his own. “Hand it over.”

Now, Rumpel is wagging his finger and shaking his head, as if scolding a child. “Why would I do that when you intend to use it to heal our dear _Emma_?”

Your skin crawls at the way he says her name and you’re not thinking very clearly when he’s holding the flower that is Emma’s only salvation in his hands so carelessly, but you know him.

And you know enough about him to understand that, if he cares so much about you saving Emma, then he has a reason to let her die. And if he has a reason to let her die, then it’s entirely likely that he’s the reason she’s in the situation that she currently.

He looks different than the last time you saw him, standing on the edge of the water with that bean. He looks stronger, more vibrant. More present.

You’re not sure how to describe it.

He’s watching you carefully, his eyes dark as they scan over your face, and then a smile starts to turn at his lips. “Well, dear, I must say—you’re not nearly as naïve as you once were.”

And, with a snap of his fingers, he disappears.

Taking the flower with him.

.

The aftermath of his disappearance is chaos.

Henry’s sword still pointed at you, though his eyes are trained to the spot where Rumpelstiltskin was previously standing.

You trying to get around him, to step into the bedroom—through that open door to reach Emma—but Henry’s guards standing between you, one of them grasping your arms and pinching them back behind your back so that you can’t move.

As though it’s the prince that you’re after and not his mother.

Ruby stepping towards you as though she has every intention to have you released, only to be stopped by another guard still.

Distantly, you hear yourself saying Emma’s name, but you are reaching out with your magic and trying to find Rumpelstiltskin.

Trying to sense him.

Trying and trying and failing.

.

“His castle,” you say.

It’s later and Emma’s breathing has softened into erratic and light bursts are making short, biting moments of alarm shoot through you.

She’s running out time.

You say, “That’s where he’ll be.”

“Then take me there,” Henry says and he’s trying to command you with all the air of a born royal, but it loses a great deal of its effect when he is kneeling beside Emma like that.

And it’s not that simple.

“I can’t,” you tell him and he finally looks away from Emma for the first time in a good while—since he told his guards to release you so that he could talk to you, since he knelt beside her again.

For a farcical version of your son—one who is not real—it is hard to ignore the affection he is still carrying for his mother.

“This isn’t a discussion,” he tells you, looking more stern than you knew his features capable. “You will take me to him. Magic will not take anyone else from me.”

And, the funny thing is that this sounds exactly like _your_ Henry—so against magic unless it’s making things easier to saving someone’s life. So hell-bent on destroying it entirely.

“You don’t understand,” you say and the old you would have found you to be even more of a joke than you currently do—being commanded around by a thirteen-year-old boy who can hardly hold his sword upright. “He’ll have cloaked it with magic to keep it hidden. I understand the way that his mind works. He doesn’t wish to be found right now, and if he wants to be invisible, he will be.”

“Then how do you propose we get there?” This is said sternly, too, though it carries more than a little genuine curiosity.

And it’s lucky that his men are outside of the room—are hidden behind the corners of these walls so that no one can really see in. It’s just you and Henry and you’ve had enough shocks for one day, but apparently not everyone thinks so.

The Blue Fairy really does have a knack for showing up at the oddest of moments.

.

Things move quickly after that.

So quickly and so hazily that you hardly notice when you’re on a horse, when Emma is back on that travois and hitched behind you and Ruby is there, too.

Henry stays beside you and he’s only brought two of his guards.

The captain from before and another knight who looks closer to Henry’s age than he does to yours.

You think there may have been an argument about that but you’re not actually certain because everything has become a blur.

It could be you, but it could also be this world.

Things have gotten entirely out of hand and it feels as though everything is covered up with a thick layer of fog—like you’re stuck in a dark room, fumbling for the blinds—and you’re thinking of getting Emma home and nothing else.

The world, you think, was not built to hold you for this long.

It’s as if everything is becoming a dream.

.

It’s not hard to find Robin.

Not with pixie dust leading the way.

Your heart gives a particularly painful thump at the memory of the last time a fairy had led you to him, but Emma is unconscious.

“Regina?” he says when he sees you and you’re glad that there’s some distance between your makeshift caravan and his camp because you hate doing this at all, but it might have been impossible with the eyes of his men on you, too.

“We need your help,” you tell him, but you don’t get off the horse—the one he gave to you—to say it.

Time is of the essence.

He looks at Emma for a very long moment, unconscious and bleeding through her bandages on the back of the horse. He looks, for all the world, as if the only thing he truly wants to know is what happened to her in the time since you said goodbye to him, but he doesn’t say anything.

He just says, “What do you need?”

And all of this has gotten completely out of hand.

All of this is your fault.

.

The Blue Fairy is the only one who is convinced it will work.

Even Robin isn’t entirely positive.

“The last time I snuck into the Dark One’s castle, I very nearly didn’t escape,” he says and, yes—you knew that.

He’d told you the story in your own world.

Your head feels heavy, vision fuzzy. Robin’s face is hard to focus on as he says this, riding on an extra horse beside you.

The pace is fast, but not nearly as fast as you’d be able to go had Ruby stayed behind with Emma. But she’d just said _You could use my help_ and had refused to be left behind and you wonder if it’s another side effect of having been locked away from all adventures for so long. Either way, Emma is slowing all of you down and you need to hurry.

You wish you could have her up on the horse with you, her arms on your waist like before and her breath puffing into the back of your neck as you ride.

“Why does the most powerful sorceress in the land and a fairy need help from me?” he asks, but he doesn’t sound accusatory, just genuinely curious.

Henry shifts the reigns uncomfortably and doesn’t look at anyone. His men are paying close attention behind them and this really is ridiculous—how many of them there are. They’ll never be able to gain the upper hand like this.

“The Dark One is very clever, and usually several steps ahead of his adversaries,” the Blue Fairy says for you.

Henry is eyeing her like he’d like very much to be holding a flyswatter and you wish she’d have stayed in human form, but that would mean drawing _even more_ attention to this quickly growing group on the main roads—especially with two Royal Guards and the prince himself riding shotgun.

She has said nothing about sending you home. Not since that initial meeting with her after having escaped the very boy you are now traveling with, but you aren’t eager to see Henry’s reaction to the news that you intend to spirit his mother away from him forever.

“He’ll have cloaked his castle with very powerful magic, enough to keep any other persons with magic from finding him. It will be impossible for us to find,” she tells him.

“And, if you’ve been there before?”

He asks this and your head is still spinning, making the road stretched out in the early morning look impossibly long. The Blue Fairy is answering, but her voice sounds distant and tinny.

You look at Ruby, who has the hood of her cloak drawn over her head. For a moment, you’re certain that she isn’t there, at all—that there is nothing but emptiness in the space beside your horse—but then she’s there again.

Looking at you and saying, “We’ll save her,” and she’s desperate for Emma’s return to health, for her safety, even though she has no reason to be.

You say, “We have to,” less because you have faith that you will and more because you’re not able to think about what the alternative may be.

.

Very powerful magic, indeed.

Two or so miles from where you are _certain_ Rumpelstiltskin’s castle should lie, you find yourself in the same curve in the road you’d been twenty minutes prior.

The sun is almost up entirely now and it’s so peaceful and quiet in the forest that there must be something terrible coming, but you don’t want to imagine what it might be.

“We’re going in circles,” you say to Henry who is looking frustrated.

He frowns at you, and opens his mouth as if to ask how you’ve come to this information. You nod to the fallen tree to his right, rotting on the ground and you’d seen it the first time down this road, and again the second time. The third is when you notice and that’s too long entirely.

“Is this the cloaking you were talking about?” Henry asks and Robin is watching, too.

It is, of course.

There’s no need to confirm it.

But, there is need to cut your losses.

.

“I can come with you,” Ruby tries, but you shake your head.

“You’re the only one I trust enough to—” and you don’t finish, but the way your eyes move to Emma must be enough.

The creases around her eyes are deep and her the ones around her lips become more prominent with her pretty frown. She’s not _Ruby_ here, though. She’s Red and she is far more capable of protecting Emma than Henry’s men are.

You can hear them, arguing with their prince that it’s not safe to go gallivanting around with an enemy of the crown, wielding dangerous magic and going to see the Dark One again. But Henry is not budging. You don’t look at him very long, but you know how to read the scowl on his face.

Even here, it’s the same one he’d brought out constantly until he turned twelve.

When protesting bedtimes and her no-snacks-after-eight rule, that look had come out, though it now appears far more deadly with his left hand resting gently on the hilt of his sword.

“She will be just fine,” Ruby tells you and there’s this look you share that means all the thanks in the world, even with the all of it tilting on its axis and making you feel dizzy.

You actually believe her.

“I’ll be back soon,” is all you say to Emma and you kneel down beside her to say it.

She is either unconscious or asleep—but you don’t think it’s either, now.

Not when Rumpelstiltskin is now powerful enough to have cloaked the entire area enough to turn you around in circles, after decades of being locked away, cut off from his magic supply.

Emma is still beautiful. You’ve always thought so—often heedlessly in the middle of a fight with her or those nights when she’d drop Henry off at your house for dinner and sort of shift her weight in the doorway making small talk until you invited her in to share.

 _If you’re sure,_ she’d always say, and then she’d have two helpings of whatever you made and it was always so incredible—the way she made you feel even when she had spaghetti sauce on her chin.

Even now.

You’re not sure how she manages it when she’s bleeding like that, but she does.

You press your lips to her pale, pale cheek and her lips part as if she knows what you’re doing. The rest of the party is watching no doubt, and your stomach rolls to think of Henry seeing a moment like this—at the thought of _any of them_ seeing this moment that should belong to only you.

Still, you say, “I promise,” and you brush your fingers through her hair—one of the only safe places for you to touch—and get to your feet.

Ruby squeezes your arm when you pass by and her eyes meet yours meaningfully before you follow the others down the road.

You have a brief and faraway thought that you may not see her again.

Or Emma.

You may not come back.

.

It’s Robin who leads the way this time, and he cuts away from the road and through the more perilous forest. The Blue Fairy remains close and you watch her hover just ahead after him. Henry brings up the rear and you imagine that you can feel his tension and the way he is stretched taut and ready to snap.

Ready for this to be over.

You wonder if he knew about magic growing up, with it being outlawed by his grandparents. Did he hear stories of fairies like the one trying to help them? He must have, to have known enough to call upon the Dark One for aid.

So outraged by what magic—what _you_ —have taken from him and yet trusting implicitly if it means saving someone he loves.

He may not be your son, but he is as close a copy as you imagine any wish or spell might have been able to make.

A heavy buzzing reaches your ears after a long time of walking. And then it’s in your head, too, and then your chest. Your blood and spreading down to your toes in your oversized boots.

As it always has, Rumpelstiltskin’s magic is dark enough to leave a foul taste in your mouth and you recognize its power immediately.

Miraculously, Robin is leading you through the thick veil of magic surrounding you.

You are suddenly fiercely afraid of losing him in the fog of this world, in your mind. You find yourself reaching out towards Robin and grabbing hold of the back of his vest.

Saying, “I don’t want to lose you,” to Henry and holding out your arm.

He is hesitant to take it—so much like that ten-year-old boy who had figured out how to be afraid of you even after years of bedtime stories and late-night hot chocolate—but he takes it after a moment. His fingers are nothing more than a whisper of warmth and pressure against the crook of your elbow and Robin’s vest feels too thin, like a piece of tissue paper that’s about to tear.

You’re certain that you were right about this world, now.

Either it is fading, or you are.

.

It’s a lot of walking and then you’re there.

The mere act of having gotten through the wards placed by Rumpelstiltskin seem to make them begin to fade away. Things are not nearly as distorted as they’d been mere minutes before.

Except—

“It would seem that the Dark One saved the best of his protection spells for the perimeter of his castle,” the Blue Fairy says.

It’s meaningless gibberish for around thirty seconds—as Henry lets go of your arm, no longer afraid of being lost, and you release Robin in kind—and then you understand what it means.

Or, rather, you feel the push of the boundary against you.

Like holding up two magnets with the same poles, the force of it is repelling you.

“I’m afraid this was here during my previous visit, as well,” Robin says, and you don’t doubt it, but he’s speaking of a visit that happened over thirty years previous.

“I’m certain he’s made it stronger this time around,” you tell him.

His eyes are soft when he turns to you, and all he says is, “I was able to pass through before,” like he means to do it again.

The Blue Fairy is standing close to where you imagine the boundary line is sitting, inspecting it with narrowed eyes, and after a moment, she says, “The boundary is impassible. Getting through is impossible, I’m afraid. Even if we were to combine our magic.”

Your mind immediately jumps back to Emma, lying on that travois with Ruby as her guardian.

Being drained of her magic.

Bled dry so that the Dark One can become more powerful than ever.

You remember Robin— _your_ Robin—sitting next to in this same forest, albeit a different location and time. Just weeks after you met him. You remember hearing of Marian and the impossible mission he’d set out on to save her when she’d been dying years prior. Pregnant with Roland and dying.

 _His servant girl saved me_ , he’d said and you hadn’t had to do any reaching to imagine Belle doing just that. _But the Dark One tortured me for days before that. Yet, Marian lived. Love, I think…_ And his eyes had gone pale at this, fixed distantly at the distant waves of the lake and you’d been thinking of Henry—Emma, too—and the hole in your heart, how you’d never see them again.

_Love always finds a way._

“Love,” you whisper without meaning to and it’s Henry who says, “What?” having found his voice, remembered that he was meant to be holding her hostage to get her to save his mother.

But you don’t look at him. You look at Robin and say, “Love is his only weakness.”

No one seems to understand what you’re saying, but that doesn’t matter.

“He…He lost the ability to truly understand it when he lost his son in this world,” you explain. “It’s not something he considers dangerous—just something that can occasionally be taken advantage of.”

You think of Emma again—the product of True Love—suffering for her inherent magic from parents she hadn’t even known until well into her adulthood.

“He can’t protect himself against it.”

Robin seems to understand then, going by the look that crosses his features.

So, it seems, does the Blue Fairy. “When you first came here,” she says, looking at Robin, “what was the intent behind your visit?”

He looks between you and her, as if he hadn’t expected to have to answer that. Something distant is in his eyes, and it’s a look you’d once come to associate with thoughts of Marian, but it somehow seems more faraway now. He’s experienced more tragedy in this world than merely losing his wife.

“To save my wife and unborn son,” he says, so quietly it nearly goes unheard.

Then, the Blue Fairy’s eyes are on you. “I’m afraid we won’t be able to follow you,” she says, “but the two of you may be able to pass through the wards unharmed.”

Henry has this dark look on his face like he doesn’t understand what’s about to happen and you press your fingers into your leg at the thought of taking him anywhere near Rumpelstiltskin again. “How?” he asks.

“If you love the princess,” she says, “that love might be enough to protect you.”

And now the shadow on Henry’s face is even darker, his eyes a storm of dark brown as he considers you, considers what’s been said.

But he must be thinking of his mother.

Must be thinking of Emma.

He keeps his sword in his sheath and says, “Lead the way,” to you so kindly that you’re certain you must have misheard him.

.

It’s only surprising to Henry that it works.

You’ve loved Emma for so long that it’s become the easiest thing in the world, but it must seem so outlandish and impossible to him that you choose not to think about it.

He follows closely behind you as you start the descent down the high hill surrounding the property. You can hear the heavy smack of his boots on the grass behind you.

Nervousness thumps in your chest with each beat of your heart.

 _Take the rest of this_ , the Blue Fairy had said before you could slip away, handing you a small worn pouch of dust she'd used to find Robin. _I’m afraid it isn’t much, but it’s all that I have. Use it. It should be enough to help you get away._

Now, the pouch of pixie dust is light in your pocket and you finger it idly as you walk, trying not to think of having to use it.

Trying not to think about what will happen to Emma if you die, but you do allow yourself to consider the possibility of dying here.

Today.

“He asked for something of hers,” Henry says behind you and it’s the first you’ve spoken since leaving Robin and the Blue Fairy behind.

You turn your head to look at him, but his eyes are on his feet and he continues on without a glance at you.

“In return for her whereabouts. He asked for something that belonged to her.”

Every moment you are proven more correct is a solid twist of the knife in your gut.

“And what did you give him?”

Henry is silent. And then, “Nothing. Well—” He stops himself, and then says, “He went into her chambers and took something. I didn’t…”

He doesn’t have to finish.

He didn’t think it would cause any harm.

The sky is a miraculous blue and it would be beautiful if you were anywhere else.

If Emma were anything other than dying.

The doors open immediately and the distant creak of Rumpelstiltskin’s spinning wheel echoes through the entryway, beckoning you onward.

.

“My, my,” is the first thing Rumpelstiltskin says when you enter, “that certainly took long enough.”

He is sitting at his spinning wheel with his back to you, across the great and long hall and he turns very slowly before regarding you and Henry with a sneer.

“And you brought back-up,” he says. “How charming.”

“Give us the flower, you monster,” Henry says and his sword is out now, as if ready to throw it again.

So like his grandfather--his other grandfather, of course--in that regard.

So like his mother.

“Now, why would I do that?” Rumpel mocks a thoughtful pose, his finger stroking his chin. “After all, every moment _she_ dies, I become stronger.”

There is some twisted form of victory in your stomach at the confirmation that you were right.

He’d set up the entire thing from the start.

He’d sent you and Emma straight to that tunnel and then shattered it on your heads. He’d linked himself to her with whatever it was he took.

And now he’s draining her life away and taking her power for himself.

The flower must be close to him.

There’s not even a vague possibility that he would let it out of his sight knowing you’d be coming for it sooner rather than later.

Henry moves closer, his sword still out and poised for use.

Rumpelstiltskin grins. “I must say, boy, _this_ —” He flourishes a hand and suddenly there is a photograph in it, folded and aged at the corners. You are too far away to make it out. “—was most helpful. You might want to work on that ‘trusting’ part of your character profile if you intend to be king.”

And Henry—so foolhardy—throws that damn sword of his again.

In some mocking form of symmetry, you say, “Henry, no!” and then you’re tugging that pouch out of your pocket and slipping your fingers inside and then—

Rumpelstiltskin may have grown more powerful, but the pixie dust halts him immediately, freezing him in a laughing sneer with that picture outstretched and the other hand half-raised—probably about to snap Henry’s neck with it.

Always so ready to brag before he ever actually closes in on victory. One of his weaknesses, too, and possibly the only time he can be defeated is when he’s in the midst of what he thinks is the end for whomever he’s up against.

In the cloud of dust, Henry’s sword has been frozen as well, much like Emma had frozen it days ago and it hangs in the air for a moment before clattering to the floor.

“He deserves to die for what he’s done!” Henry roars, turning on you now that you’ve immobilized his enemy and intervened.

“He can’t die!” you tell him. “Not like this. The Dark One would never be so easily defeated.”

You’re moving swiftly towards Rumpelstiltskin now. The pixie dust, years ago, hadn’t been able to hold you for very long and you imagine it will hold him for even less time.

Except…The picture. The photograph.

The thing of Emma’s that he took.

It’s one from your world.

One that had once been in a scrapbook of memories from Henry’s younger years. One taken on his fifth birthday when you’d thrown a party only three of his classmates had attended, but it hadn’t mattered anyway.

And, in it, he is sitting on your lap and grinning at the camera with blue icing on his lips still. You’re in it, too. Smiling at him instead of the camera and actually looking content. You remember that day. You remember Archie taking the picture and saying _Say cheese_ and then Henry drawing out the word and laughing long after the picture had been taken.

You’d shown Emma the scrapbook years back. Given her the whole stack actually because she’d made an offhanded comment about how big Henry was getting at lunch one day and you’d understood in that moment that she was the only other person in the world who would fully grasp how you felt about the matter.

She must have taken it.

It’s been folded, it looks like—white in the middle as if she’s been carrying it around in her wallet. Perhaps she has. It must have been on her when the Queen wished her away.

A sob slips out past your lips, unbidden, and you clutch at your chest with your hands.

It doesn’t matter that Rumpelstiltskin is inches away from you and murderous.

The flower is in his vest pocket.

So careless and thoughtless.

You take the picture too.

“We have to hurry,” you tell Henry. “He’ll be free soon.”

And Henry is watching you carefully. He’d seen the photo, too.

And now he doesn’t understand.

“What is that?” he asks, and you’re not sure how to tell him that everything he knows—himself, too—is fabricated.

.

Somehow, though, you do.

“I will stay here,” he says when you’ve finished speaking, after a long stretch of silence.

You’re running out of time.

“You can’t,” you tell him. “He’ll be free soon. He’ll kill you.”

But Henry doesn’t seem to care. He inspects his sword because he can’t seem to meet your eye.

“And I’ll be here to slow him down,” he says. “You told me you would save my mother.”

He’d looked at the photograph for a long time, and you’d expected him to call it a farce—to say you’d created it for your own purposes—but he hadn’t.

Just like outside that cave just yesterday, he believes you.

You wonder if something inside of him feels off, or not real.

You wonder, not for the first time, if figments of a wish can even truly feel anything at all.

But, they can. They must.

There are tears in his eyes. “Everyone I love will be gone. My grandparents…” You look away guiltily. “My mother. Why would my death matter if I’m not real?” he asks and you don’t realize you’re crying until the sting in your eyes becomes unbearable.

“It would matter to me,” you tell him. Automatically, you reach out as if to touch him and bring him closer.

You’re not thinking of your son at home in this moment. You’re thinking of your son, in front of you. Willing to die to save his mother. To send you home.

This time, he does look up. He finally meets your eyes.

He says, “Then let it mean something.”

And he lets you touch him. Lets your palm rest on his cheek and stroke at a tear sliding down it.

Lets you leave.

Lets you close the door and run.

And it’s one of the hardest things you’ve had to do.

.

“Where is the prince?” Robin asks when you return, but you don’t answer.

You say, “We have to hurry,” and there must be enough urgency in your voice that they listen.

.

It only crosses your mind that returning without Henry might be enough to be killed on the spot by his guards when you reach the point of the road where you left Emma.

But, by then, it doesn’t matter anyway.

The guards, it would seem, are already dead.

They’re lying lifeless and bleeding on the dirty ground and Emma’s name is bouncing around painfully in your head so desperately that you cannot breathe for a moment.

“What happened?” Robin asks and the Blue Fairy looks frantic but you are already running to where you see Emma lying on the travois.

“Emma!” you say, when you reach her.

But she’s fine—or…She’s alive still, but barely, and the flower is burning brightly in your pocket.

And then you see Ruby.

.

The Dark One’s wards, it would seem, did more than just make you lose your way.

Like some sort of trip wire, they went off whenever anyone got too close and that meant, apparently, something bad enough to leave Ruby with her stomach torn open.

“They were wolves,” she whispers quietly and pained and you hold her in your lap, hands shaking as you reach out a hand to try and save her. The irony of it is not lost on you, but you can hardly think about it because her cloak is a much darker red around her abdomen than you remember. “I—”

She coughs and then her lips are red, too.

Not ten feet away are two great creatures, sloped and torn and just as dead as Henry’s guards.

Ruby protected Emma, it would seem.

Ruby kept her word.

You can imagine her—changing form without a full moon, changing to protect Emma—but there is one of the guards swords beside her and you know it was more than that somehow. She’d fought them on her own, with nothing but a sword she didn’t truly know how to hold.

Fought them and killed them.

Your magic does nothing to save her. The wound won’t close.

Enchanted injuries are still beyond you.

“Do something!” you scream at no one in particular, but Ruby is dying and the Blue Fairy can’t save her.

Tells you so.

_There are things beyond even my power._

You pull the flower from your pocket and hold it up, but Ruby stops you with a firm hand on yours.

Ruby says, “It’s okay, dear,” as if you’re much younger than her. As if you didn’t ruin her life here. “Don’t waste that on me.”

As if she isn’t dying at all.

And she’s not real. You’ve been telling yourself none of them are since you arrived.

You’d killed Snow and Charming without a second thought.

But now…

Ruby slips away. You think you feel it when she leaves.

The ground shakes a little below your knees.

And it certainly feels real.

.

You cry for a long time.

You cry when Robin takes a blanket off of Emma and drapes it over Ruby, promises to return her home and bury her properly.

You cry and cry and then there’s no point in it anymore.

You can save Emma now.

You have to.

.

It doesn’t feel right to use the flower on the blood-soaked ground, so you travel further into the forest to do it.

For a moment, you are certain that Robin and the Blue Fairy both are flickering in and out of sight—blinking out of existence only to reappear a moment later.

The world, it seems, is falling apart ever more rapidly.

“You must think of what you would like for it do to,” the Blue Fairy tells you as you hold Emma in your lap and hold the flower over her. “Not the action itself, but the intent behind it.”

For a moment, you’re certain there is something she’s not telling you, but you’re not sure what it is and you’re too focused on Emma to ask.

You’re focused on the pretty curve of her cheekbones and the flutter of her eyelashes—the way her lips had felt against yours not two days ago.

It seems like a lifetime now.

You think of Henry—waiting and desperate at home, and the Henry from _here_. The Henry that is possibly dead or dying. That sacrificed himself and let you leave him behind to save a mother that doesn’t even belong to him.

You think of Emma at home with Henry, sitting on your couch and eating sugary breakfast cereal in your kitchen—the Lucky Charms you keep hidden in the back of the pantry so that Henry isn’t tempted to eat them before school every day. You think of how it would be to hold her hand walking down the street, or kiss her goodnight and fall asleep with her pressed into your back.

At first, you only see it out of the corner of your eye because you’re watching Emma’s face so intently.

But, when a golden light casts shadows across her nose and eyelids, you finally turn your head.

The flower, it seems, is healing her.

.

It’s almost too easy.

The brunt of it, at least.

Her cuts disappear and her cheeks regain their color and then—blessedly—her eyes open.

She says, “Regina?” very quietly and you can feel the ache of your cheeks from the width of your smile, sudden and bright. “What’s going on?” Her voice is soft and gravelly from disuse and probable dehydration and the next thing she says as you curl her into your arms further is, “Did you save me?”

And the simple answer is _yes_ but it doesn’t seem right.

Not with Ruby dying in your arms and Henry saying goodbye.

“No, Emma,” you tell her and you press a series of unhurried kisses against her forehead. “Someone else did.”

.

It’s a short-lived moment, because Rumplestiltskin is coming. He’ll have felt his tether to Emma being cut and he’ll want vengeance.

Robin is kind and turns to give the two of you some space and the Blue Fairy—in this world at least—knows how to save a private moment and does the same.

The world is still dense and dull, as if the colors of the leaves and the sun itself lost their color. But Emma smiles and you can see her, at least, in perfect color.

“What happened?” she asks quietly and she’s sitting up in your arms. You draw your arms away from her, letting her free because you’re not certain what’s allowed and what isn’t.

Relief is pumping through your veins, making you feel woozy and eager.

“It’s a long story,” you manage to whisper and she’s smiling a little and it’s wonderful, but she looks nervous at the prospect.

“I’m okay,” she whispers next and it’s only then, when she reaches out to wipe a thumb under your cheek, that you realize that you’re crying. “I’m here.”

And you’re tired and lost and the world around you feels and looks a little like it’s beginning to fall apart, but Emma—always the Savior—somehow manages to put your mind at ease with a single movement.

Just one kiss pressed softly to the corner of your mouth.

“I wasn’t sure you were ever going to wake up,” you confess and Emma looks amazed at the prospect.

“I did, though,” she reminds you. “I don’t remember much during. How long was I like that?”

But, you really don’t know.

You tell her that and she shakes her head. “You look exhausted. Did you find us a way home?”

And that’s when you remember Rumpelstiltskin—Ruby—Henry.

All of it comes rushing back in a shocking wave that nearly knocks you over as you stumble to your feet and pull Emma up with you.

“We have to go,” you tell her, and she looks concerned now.

You call for Blue, still holding Emma’s hand in yours and you see Robin turn to look at you through the trees, the Blue Fairy hovering nearby.

They’re heading towards you when Emma collapses.

.

There’s nothing to be done.

The flower is crumbled and withered in your hands—it’s magic sapped out of it.

“Why is this happening?” you ask, but no one seems to know.

Emma is pale again, and shivering and groaning in pain.

The best that anyone can come up with is—

“This world is fading.”

“Emma,” you’re saying, and you hardly hear the Blue Fairy’s useless non-sequitur. “Emma, stay with me. You’re okay.”

Her cuts are reappearing, first on her face, then down her neck. Blood seeps from them, staining her already darkened tunic and she clutches at you.

“’egina,” she mumbles, eyes screwed up in pain. “Hurts.”

Robin is holding his scarf to some of the cuts on her neck, trying to stop the bleeding and he looks at you helplessly as she speaks.

Rumpelstiltskin, it appears, is now the least your problems.

“I know, darling,” you tell her and your hands are glowing purple again around the flower, but nothing is happening. “I know.”

Nothing is going to fix this.

“You have to save her!”

The Blue Fairy’s face darkens and she says, “I’m afraid I cannot. If what you’ve said about this world is true, then it is already dying.”

As she says it, she flickers away, leaving blank space where she was, and then reappears again. “We are all fading.”

You think of Ruby—there and then gone.

You think of Henry and the fog that’s settling through the trees, obscuring most things from sight as thought someone is blotting out a painting.

This world was made by a wish in mere seconds. It wasn’t meant to last.

“What does that mean? She can’t _die_.” You can hear how frantic and shrill you sound, alarmed and confused.

But she doesn’t offer anything up. No quick-fixes. No solutions.

Emma’s hands are hot as she grips onto the sleeves of your shirt. “Regina,” she groans. “Make it…stop.”

Your hands shake and Robin is watching you and everyone is expecting you to save her and she was _fine_.

She was healed.

You were going to make it home together.

And now Emma is going to die here after all.

You think of Daniel saying, _Then love again,_ and Henry saying, _Then let it mean something_ , and Ruby—

Ruby saying, _Don’t waste that on me._

You want to ask what will happen when the world fades, but no one will know the answer. You’ll simply have to find out.

And then you have a thought.

.

“The magic here,” you say as Emma bleeds on you and Robin is kneeling beside you, hands covered in her blood and it’s just so _wrong,_ but, “it won’t last outside of this world?”

The Blue Fairy—in a flash of light is big and then small again—and the fog is thick. You’re certain the ground is rumbling underneath where you’re lying with Emma.

“What’s happening?” Robin asks, but there’s no one to answer him. No one to really hear him.

She is considering what you’re saying and then a look of understanding comes to her eyes. “There is no guarantee that these injuries will loosen their hold.”

“But the magic here is fading,” you say.

The ground shakes again and it looks, for all purposes, like the sun is setting, though it has to only be early afternoon.

To think you were trying to run from Rumpelstiltskin—that you were trying to get home. Home is coming to you, it would seem.

“And there’s no way of knowing what form this world will take in your memories,” the Blue Fairy says. “It could seem as though it were a dream, or it could be as if it were reality. There’s no way of knowing.”

“But they could fade,” you say. “They could go away? She could live.”

If she doesn’t die before you get there.

You stroke your thumb across her forehead, accidentally smearing red across some of the unscathed skin you find there.

You aren’t looking at her when the Blue Fairy says, “The things that happened here, should they feel unreal to her at first, could find reality if she is able to remember them.”

It takes you a moment—a moment of watching Emma’s shuddering breaths, her fluttering eyelashes—to understand what’s being said.

“If she remembers them, even if they _do_ fade,” you start, realization settling heavily in your chest, “they could return and it could kill her. They could become real.”

Finally, you draw your eyes away from Emma to the Blue Fairy, who simply nods, looking almost as saddened at the prospect as you feel.

“What does that mean?” Robin asks, and you turn to him now.

His eyes are familiar and warm, even when they’re filled with fear. You say, “She can’t remember any of this,” but it sounds wrong coming out of your mouth.

It sounds wrong no matter what.

It _is_ wrong.

You think of Emma kissing you in that tunnel and Emma glaring at the back of Robin’s head.

You think of her warm breath on your face, saying, _I’m okay, I’m here._

She can’t remember any of it.

Robin doesn’t seem to understand what that will mean, but the Blue Fairy seems to.

“What do I need to do?”

You’re asking yourself, and the Blue Fairy and Robin both seem to understand that.

Emma struggles to open her eyes and says, “What’s happening?” in a strangled voice.

“I’m going to save you,” you tell her and the ground rumbles again.

There’s the sound of something cracking or breaking in the distance and you allow yourself to truly be afraid in this moment, with Emma in your arms.

“I know you are,” she says and she struggles to smile, even as her lips are twitching from the effort.

Your magic may not be enough to save her, but you have enough left in you to change her memories. You have enough inside of you to take her back to the moment before the portal closed. To alter things as though you’d actually gone through it in the first place.

“Regina,” Robin says, and he looks afraid for you, too.

“Thank you,” you say, and you mean it as a goodbye.

He seems to understand that and removes the scarf from Emma’s neck.

You look at the Blue Fairy next and say, “Thank you for believing me,” and she nods slowly. “Did you have a plan to get us home?”

This, you ask, because you need to know.

She doesn’t say anything, but you know the answer.

 _No_ , she didn’t. She’d believed what you’d said about this world and she must have known that it would fall apart.

That there’d be nothing _to_ do.

You think of Kyra and Fineas. You think of Ruby.

Henry.

You look down at Emma and brush her hair out of her face before placing your palms flat against her temples, feeling the magic buzz under your palms.

“What’re you doing?” Emma struggles out and she looks confused and she’s trembling so hard in your lap that you find yourself terrified that this won’t work.

That it won’t matter anyway.

You know you shouldn’t tell her—that it won’t change anything—but you can’t help it.

You want someone else to understand how much this will change for you.

“I’m taking it away,” you say simply. “All of it. Our time here, Emma. It’s the only way to save you.”

But she doesn’t understand and she opens her mouth to question you before her eyes clench shut again.

So, you say, “It will be like none of this happened.”

Her shaking hand comes up and she brushes her fingers across your cheek, leaving a smear of cold that you know must be her blood. She says, “No…N-no…It-it _did_.”

You’re crying again.

Robin.

Ruby.

Henry.

Robin’s hand on your shoulder.

“I know it did,” Emma says.

Emma kissing you in the tunnel.

“I know, too,” you tell her. “I-”

And you want to tell her then, when it matters. How much you love her.

How you’d switch places with her in an instant.

“I-I…I can’t…I won’t be able to—knowing that you—”

But you shake your head and there’s another distant crack, another boom as the world continues to fall apart.

“You won’t remember.”

Robin is fading beside you—the warmth of his hand gone and your magic is buzzing, buzzing, buzzing. Waiting to be released.

“It’s not enough time,” Emma whispers and your eyes meet hers, full of desperation and something else you can’t define.

“Oh, Emma,” you say and press yourself closer. “It never would have been.”

You’re kissing her—she’s kissing you back—when you finally release all that magic you’ve been holding back.

With one last cracking tremble, the world disappears and all you know is darkness.

..

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry to any Rumple fans out there. i love him, too, but you have to admit that he makes a wonderful antagonist.
> 
> i did reference 2x19, but didn't really rewatch to make sure it was 100% accurate. so sorry if there were any mistakes.

**Author's Note:**

> title and quotes from Richard Siken's "Snow and Dirty Rain" (go read it, my dudes)
> 
> i'll be back for more! let me know how what you think so far and hmu on tumblr if you're bored and wanna scream at me. 
> 
> peace.


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